Comments on the State Planning Commission’s Key Work Points for the First Quarter of 1953 (January 15, 1953)

Comrades Gao Gang and Deng Zihui:  I have received your report dated January 14, 1953, concerning the State Planning Commission’s work in December of last year and the preliminary key work points for the first quarter of this year.2 After reviewing it, I find it very satisfactory and approve that work proceed accordingly. A copy has also been forwarded to all members of the Political Bureau for their information.

This serves as our reply.  Mao Zedong January 15, 1953  Printed from the manuscript.

Gao Gang was then Chairman of the State Planning Commission of the Central People’s Government. Deng Zihui was then Vice Chairman of the State Planning Commission of the Central People’s Government. [2] In their report, Gao Gang and Deng Zihui stated that since December 1952 the State Planning Commission, in addition to dispatching more than forty personnel to factories and mines across the country to gather information and inviting various industrial departments to deliver special reports, had primarily collaborated with the Central Financial and Economic Commission to calculate five-year targets for fiscal revenue and investment, and had conducted preliminary studies with the heavy industry sector and other relevant departments on major capital construction projects and investment control figures for the five-year period. With regard to the work for the first quarter of 1953, the report put forward four items:

(1) To draft an outline of the Five-Year Plan. Following the views of Vice Premier Chen Yun, the draft outline of the Five-Year Plan prepared by the Central Financial and Economic Commission last year would be reviewed together with the relevant departments, with particular emphasis on the following issues: (a) Based on the original five-year fiscal budget estimate and taking into account the increase in defense expenditures, to assess the reliability of enterprise profits and tax revenues and their potential for growth, so as to reallocate investment between economic development and cultural and educational programs; (b) In view of the reduction in construction funds, to determine which construction projects each ministry should prioritize and which should be curtailed; (c) To estimate the possible increases in industrial and agricultural output over the next five years, in order to set appropriate rates and proportions for the development of various sectors of the economy; and (d) To calculate the demand for labor, especially technical personnel and skilled workers, over the next five years, so that the education authorities and user departments could better coordinate their efforts. On this basis, a explanatory memorandum on the Five-Year Plan outline would be drafted and submitted to the Central Committee for review and revision by the end of January.

(2) To work jointly with the Central Financial and Economic Commission to compile the 1953 plan, with a view to submitting it to the Central People’s Government for examination and approval before the end of February.

(3) To begin establishing working bodies within the various bureaus, to study working methods, and to summarize the experience gained in drafting the Five-Year Plan outline and compiling the 1953 plan, thereby educating all cadres of the Planning Commission to delve deeply into planning work and gradually master its techniques.

(4) In terms of study, the organs’ entire cadre is nearing completion of their study of Malenkov’s report at the Nineteenth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and is now preparing to study several important documents from Stalin’s writings on socialist economic problems and the building of socialism.